Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Happy Birthday Dulwich Hill Bicycle Club!

I am very proud to be a member of Dulwich Hill Bicycle Club, which celebrated its 100th birthday on monday night. DHBC is the oldest continually running bicycle club within Sydney. Many people find competitive cycling to be a hot house of egos and yuppie cycling bling, but I think our club enjoys a spirit of cycling that encompasses the virtues of encouragement, sharing, competition, fun and community. But of course, I'm blindly patriotic and biased in my opinion of the club.

In today's edition of The Glebe, there is a little story on the amazing history of the club.

FROM penny-farthings to carbon frames, the Dulwich Hill Bicycle Club has experienced a centenary of bike history.

The club was founded on April 8, 1908, and in the early days was one of Australia's strongest clubs.

The past five years has seen a surge in membership and it now has 80 members. Its focus now is to boost its ranks of women and junior members.

Along with the Marrickville Bicycle Club, Dulwich Hill designed and operated a velodrome at Henson Park from 1937 to the late 1970s.

This was used to host the cycling events for the Empire Games in 1938.

In the second half of the last century, interest in cycling started to decline resulting in two clubs, Marrickville and Petersham, joining with Dulwich Hill.

Lionel Cox, originally from the Marrickville club, is still a member and helps run weekly training sessions.

Cox won a gold medal at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki in the tandem track event and a silver medal in the 1000m sprint scratch race.

In the late 1970s the Henson Park velodrome closed to make way for light towers so the Newtown Jets matches could be broadcast on television.

A velodrome was built in Camperdown, in what is now O'Dea Reserve, which operated until 1998.

The club now trains at the Canterbury Velodrome in Undercliffe.

Its link to the past is maintained through the work of Alan Sumner who builds penny-farthings and sells them throughout the country.

The club enters the National Penny Farthing Championships in Tasmania each year and the most recent title was won by Dulwich Hill rider Huw Morgan.